They can have lutino daughters no matter what color the hen is. With a split lutino cock, the expected ratio is that 50% of the girls will be lutino. To get lutino sons they would need to be paired with a visual lutino hen. In that case, 50% of the sons will also be visual lutino.

BTW there's a genetic calculator for budgies at http://www.gencalc.com/gen/eng_genc.php?sp=0Budg It's rather difficult to use, but if you can figure it out it's a wonderful asset. They have genetic calculators for other parrot species too. I have an article on using genetic calculators at http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... ncalc.html It's primarily about using it for cockatiels, but it will be at least partly applicable to budgies. I know nothing about canary and finch mutations so I can't help you with those.



Yes, the eyes will be red. Parrots have two color pigments. There's psittacofulvin (also called psittacin), which produces yellow/orange/red coloring. The blue gene eliminates this pigment. The other pigment is melanin, the same as what mammals have. This pigment basically produces black/grey/brown coloring, but many birds have special structures in their feathers that change the way light reflects off of this pigment and makes it look like green, blue or purple. The lutino gene doesn't completely eliminate melanin, but it messes it up so badly that you don't see the color any more. There is melanin in the eyes too which is the reason they normally look dark, but the lutino gene interferes with this melanin. As a result, the eyes of a lutino are actually clear, but there are a lot of blood vessels in the eye and we see the red color of the blood. I don't know if it's the same with budgies, but with lutino cockatiels the melanin in the eye becomes somewhat more normal when the bird matures and it changes from a bright red to a dark red.

You can sex your babies the moment they hatch based on eye color. The non-lutino chicks will have dark eyes. The eyes of the lutino chicks will be the same color as their skin. With cockatiels you can also tell whether it's whiteface lutino or yellow lutino at hatch, because whiteface chicks have white down and all others have yellow down. But budgies are pretty naked when they hatch, so you'll have to wait for feathers to start growing in to find out whether your budgie girls will be white or yellow.

The parent birds usually don't do any housekeeping so if you want the nest to be clean you have to do it yourself lol. Some people think that growing up surrounded by their own droppings helps to strengthen the chicks' immune system, so there's no harm in leaving it dirty.

I enjoy answering questions about genetics. Sex-linked mutations aren't the only complicated subjects - I have articles on the main website about several other topics and I'm planning to write more. Budgies have more mutations than any other parrot species and I'm not an expert on them, but looking for answers to questions helps me learn more about it.

There aren't any outward signs of a lutino split - it doesn't affect the color of the male's feathers. Most splits are silent, meaning that you can't tell what splits a bird has just by looking at it. The pied mutation is an exception, in cockatiels at least; it often causes a tickmark on the back of the head. I don't know whether any of the budgie pied mutations cause a tickmark. There are three different pied mutations in budgies but only one kind in cockatiels, and I'm not sure whether the cockatiel pied mutation is the same as any of the budgie pied mutations.

It looks to me like Mr Green has one of the "dilute" mutations. There are several of these - one of them is named dilute and the others have names like clearwing and graywing. These mutations reduce the amount of melanin so the colors that use melanin look paler than normal (black, brown, green, blue, etc). You can see that the markings on his head and wings are very pale and his green coloring is pale too. This link has information on dilute mutations, and the green bird in the last row looks a lot like your baby so it's probably the mutation named dilute. https://web.archive.org/web/20140419054 ... l#dilution

I'm inclined to think that he isn't olive, but I'm not very good with budgie mutations so I could be wrong.

OK, I've been reading some more about bugdy genetics and now I'm of the opinion that neither Banana (father) nor Little Lemon (the youngster I tried to sex) are lutino's!!

Because of the dark eye colour I believe they are both Dark-Eyed Clear (found through your link, Tielfan: https://web.archive.org/web/20140419054259/http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html#dilution)

In short it is a combination of recessive pied and clearflight pied.

Now I've been trying to work out the gencal (genetic calculator) but ...

What do you think Tielfan, still convinced they are Lutino's?

I don't know much about budgies so I can't be sure. With lutino cockatiels, the eye color darkens with age and if budgies are the same then it's possible that your male has dark red eyes. It's easier to tell eye color outdoors in sunlight than it is indoors.

But the baby should have had red eyes at hatch if she was a lutino, and they probably wouldn't change color this quickly. Did you look at the babies while they were in the nest? There would have been a dramatic difference in eye color between a lutino chick and a non-lutino chick. I didn't know that Buster was split to lutino, and the first time a lutino girl appeared in the nest I thought that the baby had been born without eyes because she didn't have the big dark orbs that all the others had.

If the father is NOT lutino then sexing won't be so easy. If you really want to be sure about the sex it'll be best to get a DNA test.

Wow. You're so smart Tielfan! So much helpful info on this thread. Thanks.

I did check the nestboxes, but didn't look at the eyes as such...
I can't really remember ... wish I took pictures of the nest now...

The only reason I want to know is because I want to keep the hens.
A friend asked if he could buy some if I had chicks. So I'm still debating what to keep. Reading up on genetic mutations hasn't made my decision any easier

I think I'll stick with my previous decision and offer her the green one and blue one.

Later this year the club I joined has a vet scheduled to vaccinate the canaries. I'll ask him to do a DNA-test, or at leat draw me some blood so I can use it for testing.

I took another picture of dad and son!



The red eyes are due to the flashlight! I looked at them closely but couldn't really see any red then...

Aslo after I checked the nestbox and mom came out, I got her picture too!



I'm thinking about writing al the genetic information down I know about the birds in my excel sheet.

So for Tropicana (mom) I wrote down yellow base - blue split and greywing. Correct me if I'm wrong

She's definitely split blue. She has one of the dilute mutations and it might be greywing, but I don't know enough about budgie mutations to be sure.

Then there's the question of which kind of pied your blue baby is. It looks like recessive pied to me. If that's right then mom is split to recessive pied and dad is at least split to it too.

I think you might have a couple of lutinos there after all. The eyes of my non-lutino birds usually don't reflect red from the camera flash but the eyes of my lutino birds usually do. But different cameras can cause different results (probably due to the angle of the flash or some other factor), and some people report that their camera makes the eyes of all their birds look red. If your flash does NOT make the eyes of your other birds look red, it seems likely that these two have red eyes and the others do not, even if you can't see it under ordinary light conditions. If they all look red-eyed from the flash then it's a camera effect.

My little fellow here

has left the building.

I sold him to a couple with 3 kids and he's in a large cage with a blue budgie they found, almost starving. He was a bit nervous at first, since he was in a new enviroment and there was already a budgie in there...

But by the time we came back from a little tour (I showed them the aviary and the parent birds) they were already sitting next to eachother!

He's a handsome little fellow.